@article{THESIS,
      recid = {12773},
      author = {Madrigal Perez, Luis Alberto},
      title = {El espacio de lo posible: la Ciudad de México en la  imaginación cultural (1997-2018)},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2024-08},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {&lt;p&gt;In 1997 Mexico City held its first democratic mayoral  election. From the outset, the victorious left-wing  administration championed the idea that the capital was now  a new space, distinct from its immediate, ruinous past. By  the close of the 20th century, Mexico City was widely  regarded as a catastrophe—politically, demographically,  ecologically. From the social sciences to city chroniclers,  from fiction to poetry to news reports, many viewed the  city as teetering on the brink of apocalypse, decisive and  symbolically pushed to the edge by the devastating 1985  earthquake. The “democratic transition” promised a new path  for the capital, an orientation toward the future.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The country at large “transitioned” too, albeit in a  different direction. In 2000, the right-wing Partido Acción  Nacional beat the longstanding Partido de la Revolución  Institucional, which had held the presidency continuously  since 1929. Between 1997 and 2018, the leftist capital  became the primary opposition platform in Mexican electoral  politics. Hence the need to highlight a series of perceived  contrasts: the progressive capital against the conservative  nation; the cosmopolitan vis à vis the provincial; the  metropolitan safe-haven versus the narco-criminal  hinterland. This dichotomy, which complemented the old/new  city dispute, operated too in the cultural realm.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My  dissertation demonstrates how this straightforward, yet  highly symbolic political narrative held great purchase  over the production and reception of contemporary cultural  works prominently featuring Mexico City. What I illustrate  is a decisive shift in the sense-making of the city. Some  key and immensely popular cultural products were now either  conceived or interpreted from a standpoint of urban pride,  rather than condemnation. A new space of possibles—as  cultural sociology refers to a historically defined set of  reasonable, acceptable, or imaginable cultural codes—opened  for Mexico City during those two decades. By examining both  the formal aspects of these works, and the affective sphere  of their reception, I argue that politics and culture  worked hand in hand (sometimes deliberately, sometimes  inadvertently) in pushing the space of possibles,  re-enchanting a formerly toxic space while simultaneously  opposing a toxic national image.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Drawing from the  theoretical writings of Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson,  Rita Felski, Pierre Bourdieu, Franco Moretti, George  Yúdice, and others, I engage with Spencer Tunick’s  mass-nudity installation in the Zócalo (2007), Santiago  Arau’s drone photographs of the capital (2015-2018), the  relation between tourism and Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage  Detectives (1998), as well as Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018)  and the politics of “authenticity.” In tracing the  connections, affordances, and uses of these works, a fuller  picture emerges of a cultural transformation prompted by  both the economic turn to neoliberalism and the political  turn to electoral democracy. Concurrently, examining the  capital’s history from 1997 to 2018 can help us better  understand the national "transformation" promoted by the  Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional since 2018, which  continues the legacy of the leftist administrations in  Mexico City. Two former mayors have been elected president  in consecutive terms (2018 and 2024). For twenty years, the  city was the left’s laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/12773},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.12773},
}